


Interstice

by ilyena_sylph



Category: Dune Series - Frank Herbert
Genre: F/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-12 20:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12968193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph
Summary: Paul, and Chani, around the birth of their firstborn.





	Interstice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladysugarquill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysugarquill/gifts).



'Of their time spent together during the years of resistance, little has been said, and less written. Some things, he said, were private.' -- Irulan Corrino, _The Humanity of Muad'Dib_

+++

Chani's sharp, only half-stifled cry echoed down through the corridors of the sietch -- only an interim sietch, they all knew it -- and before Paul could stop it, his whole body flinched in sympathetic pain. He had seen this before, imperfectly but seen, and still the sound of her pain in childbirth ripped through his defenses. Even his prana-bindu control was not proof against his reactions to the sound of his Chani, his Sihaya, laboring to give birth to their son. He was closer than he truly should be, by Fremen custom -- had left the company of the other young men to come down into this part of the sietch -- but he had felt so drawn to her.

He had done all he could, with his mother, to help train her in the 'weirding way' as their people called it, so that the birth would be easier for her... and still she cried out? How truly terrible birth must be. 

He heard the almost imperceptible sound of footsteps and quiet Fremen breathing come up the corridor behind him. One of his Fedaykin, those willing to swear themselves to him, he was sure... and Otheym's voice spoke softly, confirming his thought. "Usul," his Fedaykin said, using his private name, the liberty granted to him for his oath, "I thought I would find you here. Come away, my friend. It is not good for a man to fill his ears with this." 

Paul shook his head, looking up the corridor towards the internal moisture seals that cordoned off the birthing room as another sharp cry rang past the barriers. "She goes through this to bring our son into life," he answered, "it seems wrong not to be with her -- I know, it is not Fremen custom. I understand." 

He had had to speak quickly, because Otheym's face had taken on a touch of horror as he spoke. Otheym relaxed as he finished, though, and one corner of his mouth quirked up. "You are not the first man to worry over your woman. Come, Muad'dib, and we will pray for a safe birth together. We will go out with you to make offering to Shai-Hulud. 

"She is strong, though, your Chani. So few cries! It is good! Your Harah will come for you when it is time for you to meet your son." 

Paul smiled at the praise for his Sihaya, for the appreciation of her strength, and permitted himself to be drawn back to the chamber where the Fedaykin gathered during times of leisure. 

Farok and Korba looked up as they entered, while Ghadhean al-Fali and Zikri both called welcome. Ghadhean added, "You found him, Otheym! Good! Ah, Muad'dib, I understand. When my Saira was in the birthing room, I paced the whole sietch, until my friends came for me. 

"Sit, teacher, and we will pray." 

Paul folded himself down to sit with them, familiar Fremen-style, and breathed out, slowly calming himself again. Chani would be fine. He had seen her holding their son. This he repeated to himself as Korba took up the first line of a prayer to Shai-Hulud for a strong child. He knew the words, though he had never heard them before, and joined the prayer in the correct moment. 

Around him, indrawn breaths betrayed the Fedaykin's mix of satisfaction and pleasure as he proved again that he was the fulfillment of prophecy. 

Soon Harah would come and tell him that their son was born, that Chani had moved to the deeper chambers that nursing mothers used, and he would be able to go to her. 

Soon. 

+++ 

Chani lay in the deep _yali_ , their infant son asleep against her chest, and waited for her Usul to come to her. 

She'd sent Harah, so it would be soon. 

She was disgusted with her own exhaustion, her weakness, and the pain that she had only barely been able to control, despite all of her Usul's lessons. Lady Jessica, the Sayyadina, had soothed her that even she had suffered in birthing Usul -- which did help her to mitigate the disgust. If the Sayyadina, wielder of the Weirding Way, had been unable to control her suffering, it was not such a terrible failure. 

And it was done, now, and they had a son! 

A perfect, beautiful, loud son who had yelled himself out and now slept quietly. Her fingers feathered for a moment through his black infant-hair. When his eyes opened again, they would show the endless blue-in-blue of a Fremen child, but he had his father's hair, and his jaw. But he had her father's nose, she had already noticed. 

She had done what was expected of a Fremen woman, and provided an heir to her man, another warrior for the Ichwan Bedwine... and, just as importantly, an heir to the House of Atreides. That satisfied her, deeply, and she closed her eyes, drowsing and thinking of the lessons she would teach the baby sleeping in her arms as he grew. For the first four years of a child's life, he was his mother's to tend and teach the basics of Fremen life and the sietch, to play with and train.

The moisture seal opened a little later, drawing her attention and her gaze -- and her Usul strode in, his eyes immediately searching for her and their son. Chani watched with a slow smile creeping onto her lips as her Usul's eyes found their son -- and the Madhi, the fearsome leader of the Fedaykin, suddenly looked awestruck and young and overjoyed at once. It was, she noted to herself, a look that made him seem singularly foolish... but not in a way she disliked. She was sure, from the way the other women had laughed at her, that she had looked much the same when he was laid into her arms. 

"Usul," she murmured, and he jumped for a moment before he came to her side, folding down onto his knees on the floor beside the bed to reach up and lay his hands on their son. 

"Sihaya," he answered, his eyes alight with love and concern alike, "oh, my Sihaya, we have a son..." 

"Yes," she agreed, "we do." She reached out, her hand running through her Usul's short, jet-black hair gently as she'd stroked their son's. 

"Are you... all right, my Sihaya?" 

Chani rolled her eyes, her fingers still running through his hair, and met his eyes again. "Usul, my heart... I just gave birth. I feel as though I've been dragged behind Shai-Hulud through the worst of the day's heat. But it was an easy enough birth, and pain is only pain. I am recovering well." 

Usul's eyes dropped, and then he laughed, low and shaking his head at himself. "That _was_ a foolish question, wasn't it, Chani? I'm sorry. I just... hate that I couldn't be with you. That I can't help you." 

"But you can, Usul," Chani told him, and the way his eyes lit and changed, widened with pleasure and relief and intent curiosity made the entirety of her heart pound in her chest and melt to pool deep in her. She loved how he looked at her, his focus on her, that she had all of his heart he could give. 

"How, Chani?" 

"Guide me through the meditation of the Weirding Way," she told him. "It comforts me to have it be your voice, rather than my own." 

And there was something almost as powerfully joining as the _tau_ orgy of the sietch in the Weirding Way trance when it was she and her Usul practicing it -- her body might be weeks recovering, but her mind was another story. 

He smiled at her, relieved, and took her free hand. "Then I shall," he said, dipping his head to press a kiss to their son's head. "And our little one will hear it along with his milk." 

She smiled at him for that, too, and felt her love for this man pour through her again, deep and true as the cisterns that would change Arrakis, as he spoke the first phrase of the meditation. 

He was hers, and she was his, and they had a son who would grow to see a world without the stain of the Harkonnen on their world. 

+++ 

In the first weeks after the birth, Chani enjoyed the murmurs of the women as she healed more quickly than any woman except the Reverend Mother Jessica ever had, and as their son quickly showed the impulses to root and to grasp, to startle and to step a surface under his feet. And more than just those, he so swiftly learned to be silent -- except in the rare moments she did not know a need of his before there was any need for noise -- proving himself such a strong child. It might be unseemly, but she was proud of her skill, of her mastery of her body and mind that meant she had risen to be the subject of amazement among the women. She, after all, was the daughter of Liet, who had brought them the dream. She was the mate of the Madhi, the Lisan al Gaib, and she felt she must be the equal of those two men, the men who had and now would lead the change of Shai-Hulud's testing ground into the paradise her people had sought for years beyond number. She might not be wife as the outworlders saw it, but she knew, without doubt, that she held his heart. 

Her Usul had proven himself a devoted father, coming deep into the sietch with them as often as he could, alert to every move their son made, amazed by every new thing that Leto -- for so they had named him, Leto for the dead Duke -- did and so proud of each. He had been a good father to Kaleff and Orlop, though they were old enough not to need much fathering (and he was only six years older than Kaleff, who would ride the worm in two more), careful to teach and explain matters to them, but with Leto he was amazing. 

Which made it all the more bitter that soon the work would be finished on the Southern Sietch, the true new Tabr, and she and the Reverend Mother and all the women would depart from this temporary sietch and their men. It would be better, she knew, to have the young and old of the tribe deeper in the protected areas unreachable by 'thopter -- twice already, the sietch had almost been found -- but that made it no more palatable. 

Usul was needed here, in the north, in the thickest part of the fighting against the Harkonnen. He had to be here in the north, where every day more fighters for the Madhi came to join the resistance, the jihad. He would not be able to leave it, and even if he could he would not choose to for more than tiny scraps of time. She and Leto would be without him, and she was not sure that she could describe all of the things their son would do while Usul was not there well enough to write them in his mind. Distrans messages were too precious for such things, as well, so she would have to save them up, to hoard them for him -- she hated even the thought. 

Arms encircled her from behind, where she stood at Leto's crib, and only the breath of his scent kept Chani from drawing crysknife and sinking it into ribs -- her hand was already coiled around it. "You live dangerously, Usul," she told her mate, leaning back against his chest. 

"Not so much," he disagreed, and she snorted at him. 

"No? I have a crysknife, my love." 

"And are aware enough not to draw it without cause," Usul told her, smile on his lips against the skin of her throat. 

"Mm. There you may be right," Chani agreed, content in his arms. "Despite that you snuck up on me." 

"Yes," Usul agreed, "and I am entirely thrilled that I succeeded in that -- it's a first. Normally, you hear me at the curtain." 

"Indeed... marvelling at our son distracted me."

"I understand that," her Usul answered, and in his voice was all of his love for their son, and though she could not see his eyes, she knew they were fixed on Leto's sleeping face. She could feel that focus, the utterly adoring absorption that marked his interactions with little Leto, and she smiled to herself. turning her head to kiss his cheek. 

"What brought you this early in the day, my Usul?" 

He sighed, and she felt his attention sharpen in the shift of his arms around her waist and the change in the air. "We've had a distrans from the southern sietch. The work crews say it's ready for the women and children. 

"I want to spend as much time with you as I can before they summon the worms to take you south." 

She'd known, she'd known it would be soon -- and this was still too soon. She turned in his arms and wrapped herself around him, aching to argue, again, against being sent south. 

The Fedaykin would need a Sayyadina for the rites after battle, the dead would need a Sayaddina to oversee the collection and blessing of their water, even a raiding band had need of women's care to -- 

"I know your thoughts, Chani," her Usul told her softly, and she could hear an ache in his voice, "and you must know I wish I could agree. But you have my heir, and Mother has already finished nursing Alia. There is no other woman with a child so young, to nurse Leto -- and would you truly see our son at another's breast, just to remain here in the fight?" 

She snarled, low in her throat, but shook her head against his shoulder, her arguments collapsing in the face of that truth. "No," she admitted quietly, "but I hate it." 

"And I. Come, let us take Leto and see if Mother or Harah will watch him a bit... and we can take our minds off the separation to come, yes? Then we'll spend the evening with Leto." 

"Yes," Chani agreed, wholehearted, and went to arrange things so that she and Usul could steal as much time as they could, together. 

All they had was now.

**Author's Note:**

> sietch: the location of a Fremen community, always within a deep cave system (natural or created).   
> prana-bindu: the complete nerve and muscle control of a Bene Gesserit.  
> Sihaya: 'desert spring'.   
> Fedaykin: the Death Commandos of Muad'Dib.   
> yali: a Fremen's personal quarters within the sietch.   
> Sayyadina: 'friend of God', a priestess. Normally one that has not yet changed the Water of Life.   
> Ichwan Bedwine: the 'broad brotherhood' of all Fremen.   
> tau: the oneness of the sietch, both a concept and an experience in the orgy following the taking of the Water of Life.   
> Mahdi: the savior, the 'one who will lead us to paradise'. Also, Paul Atriedes.   
> Lisan al Gaib: the 'voice from the outer world', or 'giver of water.' Also, Paul Atreides.   
> distrans: a technology by which information could be implanted in animals for storage and retrieval. Among the Fremen, typically in birds or bats.


End file.
